Chapter 2 - Snow

Enjoy

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December 31st - 2050 - Hokkaido

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Snow. Takami's surroundings were white as far as the human eye could see, the trees that were once brown were now covered in a layer of deadly regal frost. Takami had always loved the snow, he used to play with his Grandfather in the snow before his Grandfather had obtained his "back-problems" as he liked to call it. Now, Takami played in the snow 'alone'.

Takami proceeded to jump into a pile of the frosty white substance, a smile evident on his face, behind a tall pile of snow ,which casted an impressive shadow, about 30 metres away from Takami, hid a black substance which stared intently at Takami.

The shadow has no mouth but seemed to be cheerfully smiling as if the shadow enjoyed seeing the young Takami fooling around. Takami's parents always called Takami's Grandfather foolish for allowing Takami to explore the frosty terrain alone, however Takami's Grandfather just smiled and remarked, "Takami's young! Let him live his life however he wishes!".

The soft smile Takami's Grandfather had given Takami's parents was oddly similar to the 'smile' that the shadow had made towards Takami while he was fooling around in the white wonderland, as if there was some sort of link between the two. Suddenly Takami sprang upwards, from the snow angel he had created, and rushed over to the mountain like large snow pile that the shadow was taking refuge in. However the shadow did not enter a frenzied state and, when the time was right, jumped into Takami's shadow as Takami dived into the snow 'mountain' so the shadow could stay hidden.

The shadow was obviously experienced with staying hidden whilst performing reconnaissance and seemed to be quite familiar in dealing with these types of situations due to Young Takami's endless energy. After a few more hours of Takami having fun and the shadow moving in and out of Takami's shadow, Takami headed back to his Grandfathers house, which was stationed in the north of Hokkaido due to cold weather, which Koizuma was quite fond of.

Takami loved visiting his Grandfather when his parents were able, normally this was only on special occasions such as Christmas, new year, birthdays etc due to Takami living near Tokyo. This time Takami had come to visit his Grandfather for Christmas and stayed to celebrate new years which was today. Unfortunately this would mean that Takami would be leaving his Grandfathers house tomorrow and thus he had decided to make the best of his remaining time when he got back to his Grandfather's dwelling place.

Unlike many others, Takami did not find the stroll back to his grandfathers house a laborious task, but more of a fun pass time. This was because of the scenery that he had experienced, white mountains so tall that Takami believed that nobody would be able to climb them, blooming wildlife and frozen rivers which acted as a type of aquarium as he was able to see the fish underneath the ice.

As he arrived in front of the semi-luxurious detached house, which required a five minute walk to get to the nearest village, the shadow was quiet. However, after Takami opened the door and took his shoes off , the shadow slowly crept down Takami's body and sank into the shadows of the room and then scuttled off.

Takami did not notice the shadow's presence and scaled the stairs, turned left and went into his Grandfather's room where he saw his Grandfather laying on his futon with his signature wireless headphones on top of his ears.

Apparently his Grandfather bought the wireless headphones back when he was in his twenty's and had cherished them ever since, hence why he would sometimes fall asleep while wearing them and listening to music. Takami had thought that it would surely be painful to wear a headset while sleeping, even if it was wireless.

One time when his Grandfather had left his headset in his futon and went to go grocery shopping Takami felt as if he was compelled to use the headset without asking his grandfather, however when he used the headset and tried to listen to some music, the headset was dysfunctional. Takami was annoyed as he clearly heard the headset work whenever his grandfather had used it but his feelings of frustration were washed away when he felt a strange presence behind him and pair of eyes digging into his back.

Faster than the speed of light, Takami spun his head and tried to see who it was, but there was nobody there. There never was. Even thought multiple times Takami had clearly felt the stare of someone or something behind him, he never was quick enough to catch 'it', that is if 'it' did actually exist.

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Tokyo - Matsugaya Junior High - September 8th 2058

Reality

30 seconds before the incident

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Aoi Hashimoto, a calm and quirky girl who had golden brown hair and a pair of hazel nut brown eyes, was skipping down the third floor west hallway after exiting her classroom. Normally, she would eat her lunch on the roof of the school while enjoying the exquisite scenery that was on offer, however today was different.

Before Aoi could go hike up the stairs in order to reach the rooftop of the school she heard a extremely quiet noise. *thump* . Now, you might be wondering how Aoi was able to hear the noise if it was indeed 'extremely quiet', well this was because Aoi had a freakishly sensitive set of ears enabling her to hear very quiet sounds.

Aoi trusted her hearing ability and went to seek out the source of the noise. After sprinting for 10 second making a beeline towards the origin of the sound she arrived at a door. 'I am sure I have seen this door before' she thought. After a minute of scrounging around in her brain in order to bring out the hidden memory that she wanted to find, she suddenly remembered.

This room had been used as the club room for the now disbanded Light Music Club which her older brother had been apart of, when Aoi went to open the door, it wouldn't budge causing another memory to erupt from her mind. She remembered how her brother would frequently complain about having to push upwards whilst turning the door due to it hurting his hand. She followed the instructions and heard a click, *click*.

Slowly, but with haste, Aoi twisted the door handle and carefully flung open the door. Light flooded into her retina's as the midday sun shone brilliantly, assaulting her eyes smartly like a bully. Whilst she was getting accustomed to the light level, she heard a quite tune, peered forward and found a boy asleep on a table in front of him. His inky black head of hair sporting a few strands of gold raised rhythmically upwards and downwards, it was evident that the boy was asleep.

Aoi thought that the music was pretty good, and wondered who the song was by, the lyrics appeared to be meticulously crafted in order to express the composer's sorrow due to losing a important person.

Aoi had wondered whether the boy was comfortable sleeping on the hard wood service, more and more questions that would be left unanswered were flooding into Aoi's brain, however the curious part of her urged Aoi to wake the boy up in order to find the answer to these questions but Aoi instead decided to slowly retreat back to the door and slowly close it in order to not risk disturbing the 'sleeping' boy.

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Tokyo - Matsugaya Junior High - September 8th 2058

Inside The Void

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Takami slowly opened his eyes and cautiously observed the void in all its dark glory, he however could not find anything out of place and could not sense anyone's presence. Little did he know that two entities were observing him very carefully, one of them constantly changing their position within the void in order to not get caught, or so it thought. Unfortunately for them, Takami caught something moving in his peripheral vision.

'There it is, to my right!' Takami thought, it was the presence that he had felt lingering near him all these years, 'it' was always behind him, carefully observing every little action that Takami had done. Not once did it ever confront Takami, it only observed and made sure to keep its distance.

"Hello?" Takami queried, "I know that you are there, to my right, come out!" he demanded. It was futile. Neither of them moved, 'it' thought that Takami was bluffing and started to once again silently move around while observing Takami.

He knew that if he were to try to make contact or conversation with 'it' he would not get any answers. Therefore Takami decided to shove the presence that was staring holes into him into the back of his mind and instead start to question how the items he willed into the void were transported into the real world.

'Maybe if I were to will something into existence inside of the void, it will be transported into the real world!' theorised Takami, however he instantly noticed a flaw in his plan. 'Where would the item be transported to?' Takami inwardly mumbled.

Takami, as before mentioned, was not someone who liked to waste time, even though he was lazy. Therefore, he decided to picture the lunch that his mother always made for him for school in his mind, after doing that he then shouted "Synthesise!" aloud. Suddenly a feeling of fatigue struck him, whenever Takami synthesised something in the void he would feel as if something inside him had been used up in order to produce the item.

*Poof*

There it was, in all of it's tasty glory. It smelled just right and had steam coming of it, presented in front of Takami inside of the usually grey plastic lunch box. Takami was very tempted to just synthesise some cutlery and dig in but instead fished around in his pocket, grabbed his phone, logged in and then paused the music.

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Tokyo - Matsugaya Junior High - September 8th 2058

Reality

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Takami's eyes fluttered open as he slowly adjusted his eyes to the light that came pouring into the room because of the windows that where to the left of where Takami was 'sleeping'. After getting accustomed to his surroundings, Takami sat up straight and did some light exercises to allow his body to be in fully working condition.

Takami checked his phone and realised that had missed was the fact that he had in fact slept through nearly all of his last period and quickly equipped his bag and ran to his last class of the day.

It was a solitary walk, the hallway was dead silent, not a single giggle or conversation could be heard. Takami preferred it that way. Unfortunately the dead silence could not quell the raging anxiety that was growing exponentially inside of Takami.

Takami was confused, when he had paused his music it had been half way through his lunch period, so why now was it almost three hours later? What had happened to him? Fortunately the fatigue which he had felt had disappeared due to his large sleep period. Takami had theorised that this had happened due to synthesising an item which was very detailed, the lunch box which he produced was identical to the real one his mother made for him every day down to the seasoning mixed in the rice.

Slowly opening the door, which he hoped would be jammed, he walked into the classroom and took his seat waiting for the lecture that he was so sure would come. However it never did, Takami looked upwards to see Mr. Asano and mentally let out a sight of relief. Takami was sure that if it was another Teacher he would of gotten a lecture and a detention but Mr. Asano only smiled at Takami and asked why he was late to which Takami replied with the truth, that he was sleeping.

Mr. Asano left it at that mentally smiling, he thought that because of the black rings around Takami's eyes that sometimes appeared and disappeared that Takami might not be getting enough sleep and might not have a stable sleep schedule and was happy that Takami was at least able to get some sleep, even if it was in his lesson. Mr. Asano left Takami the maths which was required to be done before the end of the lesson, lest Takami have to complete it at home. Immediately Takami analysed the work before him like a hawk and got to work on completing his task as soon as possible.

One student a few tables away from Takami was sending guilty glances his way every now and then, something which went unnoticed by the dialled in Takami, it was Aoi Hashimoto. Aoi thought to herself that it was her fault that she did not wake Takami up and promised to herself that she would pay Takami back for her misdeed. Unfortunately for Aoi, she did not know the real reason why Takami was late, he was in the void.

A few maths problems later, which were solved with ease, the bell had range signalling that the school day had concluded thus sending all the students into frenzy, everyone had started to pack up as fast as they possible could in order to go home as quickly as possible. Takami would purposely wait in till most students had left the school grounds and then leave school as he did not like being in close proximity with others and would not waste his energy trying to be the first one to leave the school grounds.

Ten minutes had passed and Takami walked out of Matsugaya Junior High's gates and onto the path which lead towards his home. In order to get home faster, Takami normally took sketchy pathways in order to get home as quick as possible, little did he know that this time it was going to be the start of a series of chain reactions which would change his life forever.

As he was walking past through an alleyway Takami heard a distressed scream, a girl's scream to be exact. Now, Takami was not a boy who was obsessed with justice but, like most human beings would run over to help someone if they heard a scream.

The alleys were like a maze that were trying to keep Takami away from the origin of the scream, however after a few minutes of navigating the moving maze he was able to reach his desired destination. There she was, a girl with golden brown hair and hazel nut eyes, slowly backing away from the man in front of her.

The man had a strange expression, his eyes were pitch black and his facial expression could be compared to someone who had descended into madness. There was about 10 metres between the girl and the man but that was about to change. The man started sprinting towards the girl, his left hand had started to dissolve into a back substance.

Takami was bewildered! The man's right hand had started to turn into a 80 centre metre broad sword with jagged edges, he was planning to injure the girl! Takami got right into action and started to sprint towards the girl, his eyes were turning black as his speed increased. Right before the man could slash his right arm-blade in order to harm the girl, Takami jumped in front of her and raised his arms in an x pattern in an attempt to save the girl.

The moment before the slash was about to connect with Takami's arm, the world started to slow down. At that moment the only thing that came to Takami's mind was when he used to played with his grandfather in the snow.